Kansas State Justice Statistics Program, 2015

The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states.

The Kansas Sentencing Commission (KSC) was established by the 1989 Senate Bill 50 and is located within the Executive Branch. The KSC is the designated Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) for the State of Kansas. The membership of the KSC is statutorily defined and is made up of 17 members.

The SAC conducts research and analysis on issues and processes in the criminal justice system, identifies alternative solutions and makes recommendations for improvements. The SAC staff produces statistical reports on findings regarding the impact of sentencing guidelines on prison populations, sentencing trends and practice in Kansas criminal justice. The SAC is involved in the ongoing collection and analysis of data derived from felony journal entries, probation revocation journal entries and the SB 123 program. The SAC also provides statistical information to state and federal agencies, academic entities, criminal justice associations, and other interested parties.

Under this award, the Kansas SAC proposes to supplement its efforts initiated with 2014 SJS award - Measuring the criminal justice system performance of the SB 123 Substance Abuse Treatment Program. More specifically, the Kansas SAC will work to expand its sentencing databases, reprogram TPPS (Treatment Providers Payment System) with new software and new features, establish interface with TOADS (Total Offenders Activity Documentation System) that is maintained by the Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC) and employ a researcher for program utilization review. Currently, the system as constructed measures data based on historical criminal justice related data. The improvement sought for this grant will allow the SAC to improve the system capabilities to address and provide more real time data. The SAC believes that having this information along with the improved systems to track offenders will allow the state to provide more offender-specific treatment modalities. With these more offender-specific treatment modalities, the SAC believes that a clearer picture will be painted of an individual offender’s procession through the program, including pivotal moments where a reassessment of the treatment plan or a more appropriate treatment intervention could lead to more positive offender outcomes. (CA/NCF)